It's interesting how a 'credit crunch' or 'recession' in the economy affects the way companies do business.
One frustrating symptom was the increased amount of cold calling that went on during Q2 and 3 as sales managers tried to achieve targets. What a pain, and how frustrating for the poor people who had to perform it.
Then there was the DIY Digital marketing wave...
A huge increase in badly put together, poorly executed email campaigns. the SaaS Email providers made some money, but the upshot is that a lot of companies became quickly dissillusioned with the concept and struck it off the list of marketing tactics.
And of course, the saviour of the credit crunch, Google Adwords.
Free money off vouchers have been flying around in virtually every publication that hits the d...

Design and build requirements
It goes without saying that you need to be able to design and construct quality email in the first place, and that is hurdle number one for a lot of smaller companies using self service email packages - they don't even get into the inbox.
Well crafted creative does cut through, and when combined with a policy of testing in different browsers, and scrutinising the soft bounce statistics we can build a reasonably clear picture of deliverability. We can even do on the fly split testing of creative and subject lines.
Good Data in Good Data out
But you should not overlook the importance of data. You get out what you put in, and with email marketing you would be well advised to have not just a name and email address but also a telephone number, mailin...

We've been building a lot of client web sites recently and its prompted me to write this post to give some general advice as to what you should be thinking about before you start talking to an agency.
As the downturn kicks in we've had a number of enquiries where people have baulked at the cost of bespoke web design and build, comparing our prices with others, and I think its important that we make sure prospective clients look at things on a level playing field and understand what they will actually get for their money.
1. Filter out the part time and bedroom businesses
There are lots of agencies around that offer ridiculously low prices for so called professional web design.
Think about how much you would expect to charge a client for the build of something like a website,...

Our first port of call when we have a question, http://analytics.blogspot.com/and if we really want to dig deep we reference Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Clifton. You can get it from Amazon here Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
We also recommend checking out Web Metrics by Jim Sterne, and you can get that on the following link Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success

We've had a few clients ask us how best to create specific reports for areas of their site such as paid search landing pages and e-brochures separately to their main website metrics.
Well in Google Analytics it's Simple! Just create a subfolder on your web server and put the content you want to track in there. Make sure it has the main website GA tracking code in place before the closing tag.
Now in GA create a profile for an existing domain, and then select edit. Now use the filter option to reference only the sub-folder in question. (ie; www.yourdomain.com/ebrochure) Within 24 hours you'll have a nice clean set of reports that will let you get into the detail quickly!